


069. Potted Banyan Tree

by orphan_account



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Video Game Mechanics, also refs to kiibo and miu but they aren't in this, dating game au kind of?, fluff???, humor????, the kaimaki isn't really super prevalent either but it is a part of the fic so, this is literally just about maki suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 09:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18280007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "A potted Banyan Tree with spirits living inside it. It is said to be good luck. It grows aerial roots from the middle of its trunk." Loved by Kaito, liked by all but Miu.orMaki wins a moon buggy in the Mono-Mono Machine, and it all goes downhill from there.





	069. Potted Banyan Tree

**Author's Note:**

> okay. so. 
> 
> -dating game au sort of kind of dont think about it too much  
> -i love using actual in game mechanics and stuff  
> -i love maki

Maki blinks at the machine before her as Shuichi stands by as if his fingers are itching to take a turn on the mono-mono machine himself. Maki nearly wants to just step aside and let him work out the weird gambling addiction he’s developed since the casino opened, but Shuichi insists that she should try the machine since she’s never been inside the school store before. 

Reluctantly, Maki pulls a Monocoin out of her pocket and examines it for just a second before she inserts it into the machine and pulls the crank. No wonder Shuichi is constantly giving everyone gifts. The mono-mono machine is practically a slot machine, but the chances to win are way better. Why are the only two tolerable males in her life right now addicted to gambling? 

“Are you going to try it?” Shuichi asks, eyes flicking between the machine and the coin in her hand. Could he be any more obvious?

“Yes,” she answers quietly. Then, she pushes the coin in and turns the crank, and in a second, a gacha ball is rolling out into the palm of her hand. 

“That’s it?” she asks. Of course, that’s it, it’s just a fancy gacha machine. 

Shuichi giggles nervously, a common thing for him really, and nods. “Yeah, that’s it. Don’t you want to see what you won?”

Maki considers it for a moment. She doesn’t really particularly care about what the gift inside is. She was mostly just here humoring Shuichi. But then again, in the spirit of humoring him, perhaps she should open it. She pulls the plastic pieces apart to reveal a toy car. A buggy. She isn’t sure exactly what it is. 

“Oh! You got the moon buggy!” Shuichi offers, a little too excitedly. Maki vaguely wonders if Monokuma will offer a rehab program for everyone obsessed with the casino by the time they all get out of here. 

“The moon buggy,” she repeats, looking it over. She supposes that’s a good enough explanation of what it is, but it’s not like she could really tell. It just looks like a piece of junk to her. “Do you want it?”

Shuichi takes it from her and rolls it around in his hands. Then, he shakes his head and hands it back. “No, thank you. You won it, after all.”

As if that really means anything. Maki nods anyway. It’s not like she has anywhere to put it though, she didn’t have the foresight or addiction to think to bring a bag with her like Shuichi evidently does. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, and Maki nearly rolls her eyes. “Did you want to try it?”

Shuichi nods, and Maki steps to the side so he can push a few coins in. It only requires one, so he’s really wasting his money, but who is she to judge? 

Maki watches Shuichi collect present after present for longer than strictly necessary before she finally decides to end her torture and excuses herself. Shuichi is so lost in the machine he hardly notices her leaving. 

And now she has a moon buggy. What the hell is she supposed to do with it? 

Just as she’s rounding the corner towards the entrance hall, she bumps into her other favorite idiot. How perfect. 

“Oh, s-sorry Maki Roll. A-aren’t you supposed to be with Shuichi today?” he stutters out, which is weird. His skin is all clammy and gross too. 

“I was. I got bored,” she answers simply, but she furrows her brows at him. “Are you sick? What’s wrong?”

Kaito tries to laugh it off, but come on, he’s sweating through his shirt. “Kaito, if you’re sick and not telling me, I will kill you.”

That seems to get his attention, and he shakes his head fiercely. “No, no! I told you, I’m not sick! I wouldn’t hide something like that from you! It’s j-just, ah, fuck it,” and Kaito pulls a potted tree out from behind his back. Maki blinks at the plant’s reveal before looking back up at Kaito’s face for an explanation. 

“Okay. So. Shuichi got me this plant a while back at the school store,” Kaito explains, and Maki is already dreading where this is going. The next time she sees Monokuma or his cubs she’s murdering them for ever thinking that a casino and gacha machine were good ideas. 

“Okay,” Maki says, just enough to encourage Kaito to keep talking. As if he really needs help running his mouth. 

“A-a-and I was s-super thrilled! A gift from my best bro, you know? Awesome! And it’s a plant, which everyone knows I love plants, so I was super excited to put it in my room and-”

“Kaito, just tell me what the problem is,” Maki says. They’ll be here all day unless he just gets it out there already. 

“This tree is haunted.”

That actually gives Maki pause. “Haunted?”

Kaito nods fiercely. “It’s haunted. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I don’t care. It’s haunted.”

Right. Why wouldn’t it be? Maki thinks when she sees Monokuma again, it’ll be delightful to rip his plush arms from his body. Now though isn’t the time to think about murdering robot bears. Now she has to figure out how to get Kaito to stop shaking like a leaf in the middle of the hallway. 

She tries to clench her fists and remembers the dumb moon buggy in her hand. 

“Alright, stop sniveling,” she demands, and Kaito straightens up and salutes her immediately. “Here,” and she hands him the moon buggy and takes the plant. “I just won that in the dumb machine. Shuichi said it’s good luck. Should help drag out any last ghosts or whatever hanging around in your room.”

Kaito holds the buggy up to examine it more carefully, color returning to his face. “It’s a moon buggy! Holy shit, you won this?”

Like it’s hard. “Yes, I was going to give it to you anyway. So take it and stop crying about ghosts.”

Kaito scowls down at her. “Hey, I wasn’t crying! I’m Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars! I don’t have time to cry!”

Maki exhales and looks behind Kaito. “Is that a ghost?”

Kaito screams and whips around quickly, but of course, there’s nothing there. “That wasn’t very nice, Maki Roll.” 

“I don’t have to be nice. I’m an assassin.” 

-

When Maki is safely in the comfort of her own room, she examines the potted tree more closely. It’s just a tree in a white vase. Maki rolls it in between her palms as she looks around her room for a place to set it. The whispering coming from the tree is distracting at most. She sets it on a shelf by her bed. 

“Hey!” Monokuma shouts, materializing out of nowhere. Maki doesn’t even jump, she’s so used to it at this point. 

“What,” she deadpans. 

“You can’t set that there! That’s the Hidden Monokuma Shelf!”

Maki glances back at the shelves, all of them empty except for the potted tree. “Shuichi has all of those, I believe.”

“It doesn’t matter who has them! Go steal them from him if you gotta! You can’t just put whatever you want on those shelves!”

“Will you get out of here? I’m trying to commune with the spirits in the tree. Or would you rather stay so I can tell you what I really think about the casino?” Maki threatens. It must do a decent enough job, because Monokuma grumbles and leaves, finally. Maki turns back to the tree, and the whispering gets louder. She can’t make out any of the words though, but she can hear something. 

“Hm,” she bites her thumbnail. “Haunted, huh?”

-

For a while, Maki forgets all about the plant. It’s whispering is like background noise to fall asleep to after Kaito’s weak workouts, and honestly, she doesn’t dislike plants. She tries watering it once, but apparently whatever spirits are haunting the tree are also keeping it nourished just enough to keep living but not enough to grow. Or trees just grow really slowly. Maki isn’t really an expert on plants, after all. In the orphanage, she mostly cared for the children, not so much the vegetable or flower gardens. 

Still, having the little green plant in her room is actually kind of lifting her spirits. (Pun not intended, and she hates herself for even thinking it.) It reminds her of the good times in the orphanage before she’d left. 

Maki is about to leave her room to join Kaito and Shuichi in the courtyard for training when she hears a voice, loud and clear, saying her name. She looks around, eyes scanning over her bed, her desk, everything. She’s a goddamn assassin, if there was someone in her room, she would have known about it. 

Of course, there’s no one there. Maki shakes her head and starts to leave again when the voice calls out her name again. 

Maki closes her dorm room door and walks over to the shelf where the tree rests. Picking it up, she turns it over to look and make sure there isn’t some kind of device on it that emits sound. How difficult would it be to rig a plant to some communicator device to try to freak her out? Not that it’s working, because she already knows the damn plant is supposedly haunted and she doubts Miu or Kokichi would go so far for a prank on her after it already worked on Kaito. 

Then again, Miu and Kokichi were ruthless when they were working together. 

At any rate, there’s nothing on the dumb tree. Maki replaces it on her shelf and stares at it for a second, waiting for it to talk to her or something. She isn’t sure exactly what it is she’s waiting for. Regardless, nothing happens, so she finally turns to leave for training. 

When she arrives, Shuichi and Kaito are already doing push-ups. “I see you started without me,” she says instead of a greeting, and they both drop to the ground gratefully at her interruption. 

“We weren’t sure if you were coming or not,” Shuichi huffs, face down in the grass. 

“I got held up by that tree. It said my name,” she explains simply, sitting down on the ground. “What are we doing today?”

Shuichi huffs out short breaths for a few more minutes before he responds. “What tree? What?”

“Maki, don’t tell me you kept the tree! I told you it was haunted!” Kaito exclaims, and now he’s sweating even harder and looking pale. Great. 

“I don’t believe in spirits, Kaito. It’s not haunted. I’m sure that Miu or Kokichi rigged it somehow. Will one of you tell me what we’re doing?”

“100 push-ups!” Kaito answers back, eager to change the subject. Maki gets started on her push-ups as Shuichi reluctantly gets back into position, but then he stops. 

“How exactly do you think that they rigged this plant?” he asks. Maki would shrug if she wasn’t busy counting her reps. 

“I don’t know. I’m not Miu. Maybe you can ask her if you’re so curious.”

-

The rest of their workout is normal, and Kaito insists on walking her back to her room, because that’s just who he is as a person. When he leans down to peck her on the forehead, she pretends to be annoyed even as a blush suffuses her cheeks. “Maki, I’m saying this as your friend, and your boyfriend, and your workout partner,” Kaito begins. 

“Well, let’s hear it then,” she sighs, crossing her arms. 

“You have to get rid of that tree. It really is haunted, I know it. Kokichi and Miu don’t sound the way that plant does, you know?” Kaito says, eyes flicking nervously between Maki and her closed dorm door. As if the spirits haunting the tree know he’s talking badly about them. 

“Kaito, ghosts aren’t real. They don’t exist. If it’s not Miu or Kokichi’s voice, then it’s probably Kiibo’s or someone else’s. Or they’re using a voice modifier.”

Kaito doesn’t seem convinced in the least. Maki pats his arm. “You’re being an idiot. Go to bed.”

“I’m not being an idiot, Maki, I’m serious! You can’t trust that plant-”

“Kaito! It’s a plant!” Maki shouts, and she really didn’t mean to, but it’s so easy for her to lose her patience with him. “It’s a tree,” she says, calmer now. “It’s not haunted.”

Kaito looks like a kicked puppy now though, staring at the ground. God damn it all. Maki grabs him by his collar and tugs him down for a kiss. “Please trust me when I say it’s not haunted and it’s just a plant. Kaito, I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.” Maki’s sure by the look of bliss on Kaito’s face that everything she just said went in one ear and out the other, but it succeeded in getting the awful sad expression off his face, so she’ll take it. 

He nods, grinning down at her. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right! It’s fine!”

“Yes, it’s fine. Now go to your room.” He keeps standing there like an idiot. “Now, Kaito.”

“Right! Now, yep, gotcha! I’m going. Night, Maki Roll.” He trips walking backward. Maki stifles a laugh and finally unlocks her dorm room door and lets herself in. 

“What the hell?” she surveys the damage, which extends to every inch of her room. The place is trashed, her clothes are strewn about the room, and everything is turned upside down. Everything, she notes, except the stupid tree on her shelf. Now she knows who the culprit is; only one person in this shithole can pick locks. 

Storming out of her room, she heads right for Kokichi’s. She pounds on the door but doesn’t get an answer. She checks the MonoPad, and he’s definitely in his room, so she keeps pounding on the door and ringing his doorbell until he finally answers. Of course, he’s fully dressed and grinning brightly at her when he opens his door. 

“Wow, what a surprise! What are you doing here Maki? And so late at night… oh my gosh, are you here to confess your love? But what will Kai-” his voice cuts out as Maki picks him up by the throat, tightening her grip just enough to make him reconsider his words carefully. 

“What the fuck,” Kokichi chokes out. “What, what did I-?”

“You broke into my room and wrecked it, didn’t you, you fucking goblin?” she accuses. “Kokichi, what the fuck?”

Kokichi is sweating now as he struggles in Maki’s grip, and Maki lets go finally, letting him drop to the ground and fall against his door, sliding down onto the carpet. He gasps for air for a few moments as she crosses her arms and waits for an explanation. 

“I,” he coughs, rubbing at his throat and chest. “Fuck, I didn’t do anything to your room, what are you talking about?”

What is she talking about? “You have a lot of nerve lying to an assassin.” 

“I’m not lying! Or maybe I am, I guess it’s difficult to say,” he grins up at her as he gets to his feet. “Why don’t you show me the mess and I can tell you for sure if I’m the culprit!”

Maki glares at him, fingers itching to wrap around his throat again. “You know goddamn well you’re the culprit. Now tell me why you wrecked my room and I might not kill you where you stand.”

Kokichi scoffs and walks around Maki, towards her own room. When he tries the doorknob, it opens easily, because she hadn’t locked it when she’d gone up to confront him. Kokichi whistles as he skips inside, surveying the damage. “Wow, someone really fucked your shit up.”

Maki clenches her fists. “Yeah, it was you! What are you playing at?”

Kokichi whirls around to face her, tilting his head to the side as he smiles easily. “I didn’t do this, but kudos to whoever did. This is a super great prank!”

Maki shakes her head. No. No way. Kokichi absolutely had to be the one who wrecked her room. No one else could get in without her key, except for Monokuma and the cubs, but there’s no way they would have trashed her room for no reason. “Quit lying,” she demands, but Kokichi ignores her in favor of approaching the Hidden Monokuma shelf. 

“Hey, what’s this tree doing here? Why is this the only thing not broken? Huh? Huh? Why isn’t it broken Maki Roll?”

“Don’t fucking call me that!” Maki watches him pick up the tree and hold it up to his ear. 

“Holy shit, is this thing whispering?” he asks, delight coloring his features. Maki snatches the tree away from him. 

“Don’t touch that.”

Kokichi pouts. “I come all this way in the dead of night to help you figure out what happened to your room, after you choked me, might I add, and this is the thanks I get? Jeez, go ask your boy-toy to help you figure it out if this is how you’re gonna be.”

Maki assumes he’s talking about Shuichi, but the implication of him being her ‘boy-toy’ is really gross. She loves both her idiots, even if she would never say it out loud, but Kaito is the only one that makes her heart speed up like something out of those novels Shuichi pretends not to read. 

(“W-what? I only read detective novels!” Yeah, right.)

Maki’s lost in her thoughts, and so she doesn’t even notice Kokichi slip out of the room, until the door slams shut behind him, leaving her alone in her room again, clutching the whispering tree and surrounded by the destruction. 

-

Before Shuichi can head for the casino as he does every day after breakfast, Maki stops him. “I need your help,” she admits begrudgingly. 

“My help? With what?” Shuichi asks, eyes flicking around. 

“You’re a detective, aren’t you? I need your help figuring out who trashed my room.”

Shuichi nods. “It was probably Kokichi. You know he’s the only one who can pick locks.”

Maki rolls her eyes, not bothering to hide her irritation. “I already asked him. He said he didn’t do it. I don’t know if I believe him, but I don’t have any proof he did it either. That’s where you come in.”

Shuichi nods. “Well, if it wasn’t him, I suppose it could also have been Miu. Perhaps she created a lockpicking machine? There are several possibilities…” Shuichi trails off, hand cupping his chin thoughtfully as he thinks about it. 

“Sometime today, Shuichi,” Maki comments idly. 

“Right, sorry,” he apologizes, shaking his head. “First, maybe I should look at the scene of the crime? Maybe I can find some clues that you weren’t able to?”

-

Maki waits outside her room while Shuichi does his detective thing inside, sifting through her piles of things that are everywhere but where they’re supposed to be. She chews her thumbnail as she waits for him to come out and tell her for certain who did it. 

When he finally emerges from her room, he’s holding that stupid whispering tree.

“When did you get this?” he asks.

“Who cares about the tree?” she asks, shaking her head. “I got it from Kaito. He said it was haunted or something, and you know he’s scared of ghosts, so I took it from him and gave him that buggy I won in the machine.”

Shuichi hums, turning it around in his hands. “I remember you bringing up this tree at training. You suggested that Miu and Kokichi bugged it, right?”

Maki feels like she’s going to lose it. “Shuichi, who cares about the stupid tree. Unless it’s proof that Kokichi did go in my room-”

“Ah, no, I don’t think so,” Shuichi interrupts. “This tree came from the Mono-Mono Machine, didn’t it? I recognize it. It’s haunted. I think the ghosts in this tree trashed your room, Maki.”

“Oh, of course. Why didn’t I think of that?” Maki rolls her eyes. “Nevermind, this was a waste of time.”

-

Despite making fun of his detective skills and rejecting his conclusion, Shuichi still helps Maki fix her room, so it doesn’t take nearly as long as it would if she did it by herself. She thanks him and sends him away, locking the door behind him. 

Then, she turns to the tree, sitting innocently on her shelf. The whispering always gets louder when she’s alone in her room. 

“Maybe I should tear you out of your pot. If you’re the one who destroyed my room, then killing you will stop this, right?” she thinks out loud. A skidding sound from behind her makes her whirl around, and she sees her armchair moving across the room, by itself. 

“Oh, you didn’t like that, did you? Getting threatened by an assassin makes you uncomfortable, huh? Don’t fucking wreck my shit, then!” she yells at the tree. A tree. She’s yelling at a tree. Maki exhales shakily and tugs at one of her pigtails. 

But, that just means Shuichi was right, actually. Of course, he is. He’s the ultimate detective. If he says she has ghosts in her room, then he’s right. She needs to apologize to him. But more importantly, she needs to deal with this haunted tree. 

-

Korekiyo is in his lab when she checks the MonoPad, so that’s where she goes. Upon entrance, she spots the ultimate anthropologist flipping through some dusty old book, eyes scanning over the pages. She doubts he’s even noticed her come in. 

“Korekiyo,” she says, and he looks up, unbothered. 

“Well, hello Maki. What can I do for you?” he asks, closing the book without marking the page. Maki cuts straight to the point. 

“I have a haunted tree in my room. You’re the only one I could think of who would know how to make it not haunted. Can you do that?”

Korekiyo laughs. “I certainly could, but I don’t think that I will. I have nothing to gain from doing so, and I quite enjoy the presence of spirits. Perhaps I could take the tree off your hands? I would love to study it for myself,” he suggests. 

Maki nods. “Yeah, fine, sure. My room is unlocked, go for it.”

Korekiyo nods and pushes a piece of hair out of his face. “You have my thanks.”

-

For a while, Maki is blissfully at peace, and things return to normal. The tree is in Korekiyo’s hands now, and Maki’s room is free of spirits that think her room looks better as a disaster area. 

She kind of misses the whispering at night though. It’s almost difficult to fall asleep now without the sound of disembodied voices talking over each other. 

It’s another ghost free day when she enters her dorm room again to find that it’s a disaster again. This time, she knows it’s Kokichi. She nearly laughs at the destruction as she takes it all in, because oh yes, he’s going to suffer comically in return for this bullshit. But just as she’s turning around to leave and look for him, her eyes catch on the tree sitting on her shelf. 

No. No way. 

Yes way. When she picks it up, it’s gotta be the same fucking tree. It has to be, there’s no way it isn’t. How did it get back in her room? How-

Her upside-down armchair starts scooting across the floor, and when she looks, there’s a knife from her lab stabbed into it. She doesn’t know what makes her do it, but she takes the knife and cuts into her chair, cutting the fabric and tearing it away, to reveal the wood inside has a message carved into it. 

‘I missed you,’ is carved into the chair. 

-

The next day, Korekiyo approaches Maki after breakfast. “Maki, could I have a quick word with you?”

Maki nods. 

“I seem to have misplaced the tree that you gave me. Do you know where it is?” he asks. Maki shakes her head. “Hm, what a shame. I’m sure it’ll turn up. Thank you for your help.”

When Maki returns to her room, everything is where it should be. Nothing is out of place, nothing is destroyed. Maki turns to the shelf where her whispering tree rests. 

“Should I water you today? Do you need anything?” she asks. 

The whispering stops. Maki nods and walks into her bathroom to find the mirror is fogged over and a message on it reads, “Kaito is sick today. That’s why he wasn’t in the dining hall.” The letters drip down her mirror. 

She takes her index finger and writes ‘thank u’.


End file.
